Imagining Becoming Coalition: resisting academic ecosystems from within and beyond through coalition building and reversed research

ABSTRACT

This research note introduces the dreamings of Becoming Coalition, a nascent formation of subversive scholars at the University of Waterloo working in coalition with overlapping political commitments to transforming our academic worlds towards more equitable existences. We outline our desires for reimagining academic relations and research¹ potentials, encouraging others to take what they will from our writings towards engaging in similar progressive group formations in their own spaces and communities. We do not offer solutions because we too are in the continuous processes of re-mobilizing and re-organizing as we learn from our failures, usefulness, and theorypracticing possibilities in conversation with radical thinkactors.

Résumé

Cette note de recherche présente les rêves de Becoming Coalition, une formation naissante de chercheurs subversifs à l’Université de Waterloo travaillant en coalition avec des engagements politiques qui coïncident pour transformer nos milieux académiques vers des existences plus équitables. Nous décrivons nos désirs de réimaginer les relations universitaires et les potentiels de recherche, en encourageant les autres à tirer ce qu’ils veulent de nos écrits pour se lancer dans des formations de groupes progressistes similaires dans leurs propres espaces et communautés. Nous ne proposons pas de solutions, car nous sommes nous aussi dans un processus continu de remobilisation et de réorganisation, à mesure que nous apprenons de nos échecs, de notre utilité et de nos possibilités de pratique théorique, en conversation avec des acteurs de la pensée radicale.

KEYWORDS:

• education
• qualitative inquiry
• community
• theorypractice
• equity

MOTS-CLÉS:

• education
• recherche qualitatif
• communauté
• pratique
• équité

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. We conjure Derrida in putting words sous rature (under erasure) when they are both necessary to make sense within some structures, yet require rejection in other frames where their material violence or harm are recognized.

2. During an interview in 2020, Berbary (July 6) explained: ‘I like this idea of being a co-activator. Even when you are not part of the group under threat, you are still, as the Combahee River Collective taught, able to activate their calls; taking them up, pushing them, taking the momentum of the call and activating a chain/change reaction wherever you are – staying active, staying in movement, not just taking up space as performative allyship. And I looked up the word activate, it talks about delivering force, and it talks about accelerating a reaction; and why I like that is that it feels it decentered my irrelevant-in-the-moment identity by making me simply the conduit able to push those messages where I can activate them. I can activate them in myself, through readings, through lived experiences and relations; through education with others; through community engagement, mutual aid, or direct action; activate them in the spaces that I may have access to that maybe not everyone does, such as classrooms with over 100 students; and hopefully my relations and students will activate them in their communities. So, I was thinking of what it would mean to shift into this notion of being a co-activator, especially in the academy where in the current climate, identity sometimes shields, spotlights, defines, erases, targets, excuses, or binds/frees us from action – especially when there are so many people that are unsure of how their proximities to privileged identity formations entangle them in the responsibilities of liberatory work’.

3. As Butler (1992, p. 15) wrote, ‘I place them in quotation marks to show that they are under contest, up for grabs, to initiate the contest, to question their traditional deployment, and call for some other. The effect of the quotation marks is to denaturalize the terms, to designate these signs as sites of political debate’.

4. We use the taken-for-granted performative language of ‘diverse identities’ to stay with our critique of liberal solutions and the problematic ways many liberal initiatives for equality erase the very naming of the ‘diversity’ they wish to include – problematically subsuming identity, ie. racialized identities such as Black or Indigenous, under the term ‘diversity hire’. As Davis (2008) noted, and yet, the not naming of identities is the lessor of our problems, when weak conceptualizations of diversity – difference that doesn’t make a difference, stands in for strong conceptualizations of diversity – difference that makes a difference. As Berbary and Mohamed (2022) expanded, diversity then becomes a catch all for performative allyship failing to do the work to make real difference – that needed work to ‘change the unwelcoming climates, colonialist expectations for scholarship, capitalist relations, and conceptualizations of professionalism, excellence, and impact grounded in hegemonic whiteness, English supremacy, elitism, competition, and individualism – ways of being that hurt us all, that keep us from rest, and pit us against each other, even among friends’ (p. 5).

5. Diverse is used ‘tongue and cheek’ to indicate whatever ‘body’ (Black, racialized, queer, disabled) the institution decides to momentarily embrace as the needed solution/addition into the machine of academia for their performative politics of representation.

6. Futurity has precise theoretical meaning in Indigenous resurgence movements, as: ‘creating a present that will inspire a radically different future than the one settler colonialism sets out for us. This means taking on heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, and antiblackness, and actualizing Indigenous alternatives on the ground, not in the future but in the present’ (Simpson, 2016, p. 32).

7. While shared identity groups can be of great importance for collective healing, radical transformation, and strategic political representation; we argue along with radical thinkactors such as the Combahee River Collective, Smith (2021), Taylor (2017), hooks (2001), Taiwo (2020), and Berbary and Mohamed (2022) that identity does not alone and should not always alone stand in for politic – ‘identity does not always equate to political consciousness, it does not mean one can always articulate the ways in which power relations manipulate our possibilities for existence. And shared identity does not secure being on the same page, connecting as kin, or sharing political desires’ (Berbary & Mohamed, 2022, p. 5). Therefore, our collective honours politic beyond identity as what binds us – even with recognition that our identities matter, are validated, and can become interconnected through struggles that press down upon our individual locations differently.

8. As Saretta Morgan (in press, 2024) wrote: ‘where love is the question of how I’m going to help you get free’

9. As ignited by our readings of Mignolo and Walsh (2018) we work both as ‘the emphatic no understood as defensive opposition – a social, cultural and political reaction against’ and also through an ‘insurgent for’ because ‘it is in the for, in the postures, processes, and practices that disrupt, transgress, intervene and in-sure in, and that mobilize, propose, provoke, activate, and construct an otherwise … political, epistemic, and existence based; insurgency urges, puts forth, and advances from the ground up and from the margins, other imaginaries, visions, knowledge, and modes of thought, other ways of being, becoming, and living in relation … the act-action of creation, constructions, and intervention that aims toward an otherwise’.

10. Bristol noted, ‘I make the case that current educational practice reflects a habit of educational dependency which operates to displace the classroom teacher as an intellectual. In so doing, the teacher becomes constituted by a practice of ideological dependency. In education, this serves to organise teaching around a meta-principle of bureaucratic efficiency, minimise the value of indigenous knowledge, reduce the intellectual practice of the teacher to that of implementer and obscures history and culture as influencing features in the persistence of a relationship of ideological reliance upon super-states like the U.S.A. and Great Britain. These characteristics together give shape to a form of plantation pedagogy which can be typified as a practice of hopelessness’ (Bristol, 2010, p. 172)

‘edutocracy is shown as a theory of dependency on Western ideas, knowledge, services, systems, and policies based on ideologies of intellectual hegemony, academic power, and legitimacy of imperial knowledge’ (Bristol, 2010 in Denny, 2021, p. 11).

11. As we write this, we recognize such a listing of so-called academic successes is a colonialist project incommensurable with much of our politic that works towards decoupling from these very neoliberal indicators. Yet, we have chosen to include them here strategically to support us in building a case of our ‘worth’ as defined by external granting systems which in the past have dismissed funding our projects due to our lack of formalized structure, institutionally legitimized membership, and refusal of a priori methods. Therefore, this paragraph is a performative speech act meant to help us ‘legitimize’ BC in the view of institutionalized agencies so we can have more potential to make our dream of extracting resources from such institutions a reality.

12. Our readings of Munoz et al. (2020) and Tuck and Yang’s (2012) conceptualization of ‘an ethics of incommensurability’ articulated the tensions of coalitional work in which group members, projects, and relations may not always easily agree. Instead, “there are portions of these projects that simply cannot speak to one another, cannot be aligned or allied … .[we therefore desire] for what can only ever be strategic and contingent collaborations, and to indicate the reasons that lasting solidarities may be elusive, even undesirable.

13. Defined by Dr. Charisse Burden Stelly (2022) as: ‘[T]he political and ethical practice of cooperative social activity based on shared values and a common conception of social transformation rooted in the eradication of white supremacy, capitalist exploitation, colonialism, imperialism, and perpetual war. Expectations and standards are set and maintained through consistent struggle, debate, organizing, and institution building. Such practice also demands courage – the willingness to place one’s self at risk for the betterment of others – to cultivate reciprocal care and concern. Additionally, mutual comradeship includes protection from and defense against state repression; dedication of time and other resources to left-wing causes; support for radical organizations, institutions, and periodicals; and the provision of jobs and income for persons whose politics have deemed them undesirable as employees. It also requires attention and responsibility to all stigmatized and oppressed groups, given their linked fates. Thank you to Kelly-Ann Wright for reminding the group of this wonderful concept.’

14. Labour of students and community members will be funded. We have currently applied twice for funding through SSHRC to fund student labour for community justice projects and community skill sharers labour in the academy, and will continue to do so as we work towards establishing coalitions and reversed as common practice.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lisbeth A. Berbary

Lisbeth A. Berbary is an associate professor in the Faculty of Health at the University of Waterloo. Her work engages liberatory theorypractices, creative analytic practices, qualitative and postqualitative inquiry, and progressive politics.

R. Alexander

R. Alexander (Robyn Moran) is a NeuroQueer, settler Canadian and current SSHRC postdoctoral fellow interested in urban public space, queer placemaking practices, and arts-based methodologies.

Marcus T. Pereira

Marcus T. Pereira is a Master’s student in the Faculty of Health at the University of Waterloo. His research is focused on anti-gentrification resistance efforts in Black neighborhoods.

Kimberly J. Lopez

Kimberly J. Lopez is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Health at the University of Waterloo. She values working collaboratively and creatively to know more about leisure and self-care in caring work, invisibility in caring labour, aging well in long-term care homes, leisure in and through helping professions, and digital leisure technologies.